


Communication Breakdown

by woodironbone



Category: Preacher (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Cassidy POV, F/M, Haunted Houses, Horror, M/M, Monsters, Multi, Polyamory, Post-Season/Series 03, Present Tense, Yuletide 2018, emotions are hard, extremely awkward romance, just the one haunted house and monster actually, the gang fights a cryptid, utilitarian blood drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-21 18:44:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17048576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/woodironbone/pseuds/woodironbone
Summary: A drive through an empty stretch of Louisiana is disrupted by an unusual confluence of circumstances, leaving the gang stranded with no cell reception, no civilization for miles, and a rapidly setting sun. Fortunately there's a big creepy abandoned house for them to spend the night in while definitely not talking about their substantial pile of interpersonal problems. It's just one night. It's probably fine.





	Communication Breakdown

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nokomis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nokomis/gifts).



> I cannot tell you how thrilled I was to get this assignment; the Preacher prompt of my dreams. And it afforded me the opporunity to play around with an idea I've been toying with for a while now, which I thought it would make a fun little self-contained story. Spooky adventures is maybe a weird choice for Yuletide, but then again, this is Preacher. I hope you enjoy it!!
> 
> ENORMOUS thanks to [FitzKreiner](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FitzKreiner) and [AvalonAuggie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/avalonauggie), without whom this story would have been 90% harder.
> 
> some content warnings:  
> -car accident: described early on, no one seriously injured  
> -general violence warning, I mean, it's Preacher  
> -self-harm: a character punches a wall several times; non-graphic  
> -self-harm: a character cuts themself intentionally and for practical purposes; non-graphic and pretty easy to anticipate

 

 

He isn’t expecting it, although maybe he should be. You’d think he wouldn’t live this long without learning not to trust people, but here we are, over and over again, Denis, Eccarius, Jesse. Hoover hands him the umbrella and something flickers past his eyes, a manic, apologetic desperation, recognizable but just moments too late. There’s enough time to open the umbrella, to save himself, and nothing else. The roof is torn clean off, the whole bloody house just lifted like a rock in the hands of a brat looking for ants to burn, and they _do_ burn, all around him, momentary screams as they sizzle up into ash, the kids he saved, the kids he damned. There they go. Just like that.

He doesn’t really know what to think.

Then he thinks, for a second before the tranqs hit, maybe they were the lucky ones after all.

Cassidy’s legs buckle beneath him and he hits the ground hard, the umbrella still covering him by some grace he didn’t ask for. He drifts, maybe dreams, in and out of consciousness, and imagines he hears gunshots. He imagines Tulip over the phone, putting on speed from wherever she is because something didn’t sound right, _he_ didn’t sound right, and ever since she broke his heart she’s been trying so hard to prove that she gives a shit. Would be just like her to show up in the nick, shoot him out of a bad situation, stuff him in the back of her car under a coat, drive like mad until she’s lost them, maybe.

That’s awfully specific.

He half-wakes, or maybe he doesn’t, maybe he just dreams that the car slows, and that, twisting sluggishly beneath the coat, he glimpses the drape of Spanish moss through the back windshield, before the sun filters through and he ducks back into the dark. Well. For a nice dream about a daring rescue, a return to Angelville seems like an odd choice.

“Family’s overrated,” says Jesse from somewhere.

“Yeah,” says Tulip.

The car door opens and shuts, there’s a shift of weight as a body gets in. “Ready?” says Tulip.

“Ready,” says Jesse.

They drive.

Cassidy lies in his dark little shroud, wondering what the hell happened and why he has to dream like this. His friends close and quiet, the smell of them both warm and familiar. He’s probably down a hole somewhere, about to be forgotten forever. It’s not fair. It’s just not fair.

Some time passes though he can’t be sure how much, considering he’s not there for any of it.

 

 

 

“Tulip?”

“Yeah?”

“Who the hell’s in the backseat?”

“Who the hell d’you think?”

Cassidy snaps awake with a hangover so fierce he thinks he’s gone blind. Takes him a moment to realize he’s not, that there’s a coat over him. His head feels like it’s splintering apart. His extremities are practically numb. What the fuck did he _take_?

Jesse’s quiet for a moment; Cassidy imagines him staring. “Were you ever gonna… I don’t know, _mention_ that?”

“Why, so we could argue about it sooner?”

“Jesus, Tulip, is he—”

“He’s okay. Well, alive, anyway. Sleeping. Grail hit him with fuckin’ _whale_ tranquilizers.”

“The—What does the Grail want with him?”

“Don’t know, didn’t stop to ask. I’m just glad I got there first.” There’s a pause and a subtle shift of leather on leather, which Cassidy imagines is Tulip turning to fix Jesse with a look. “I _told_ you to check up on him.”

There’s another pause, another shift of fabric. “I had a lot going on.”

“Yeah, we _all_ did, Jesse! Shit.” She huffs out a sigh. “We almost lost him, maybe for good. Is that what you wanted?”

Cassidy holds his breath, and Jesse says nothing.

“Is it?” says Tulip sharply.

“ _No_ , it’s just—” Jesse cuts himself off. He sounds exasperated. Though it makes little difference beneath the coat, Cassidy shuts his eyes. “Everything was a mess between us, all right? Last time we saw each other it wasn’t exactly amicable.”

“Not _amicable_?” Tulip laughs incredulously. “If that ain’t the most chickenshit thing I’ve ever heard you say.”

“Look, what was I supposed to—”

“We were _always_ going back for him,” says Tulip. “You know that, right? As soon as we got outta this mess we were goin’ back to get him, and the two of you were gonna work out your shit once and for all.”

“Is that how it was gonna go,” mutters Jesse.

“ _Yes_ , goddammit.” Cassidy can hear the tautness of her breathing and imagines her hands gripping the steering wheel. “You can’t be mad at him forever, Jesse.”

A heavy silence hangs between them, heavy as the lingering effects of the drugs. As sensation sifts back into Cassidy’s hands and face and his consciousness restores itself, he becomes fully aware of how uncomfortable he is, lying here in the dark with his body cramped and twisted at an awkward angle, too long for the backseat, listening to his friends, his… something… talk about him like this. He wonders if Jesse ever confronted Tulip about his admission, or if that anger was reserved for him alone. The longer Jesse goes without speaking, the more the coat feels like a physical weight pressing down on him, and the louder the drone of the car’s engine becomes, until it’s all but filled his head with a monstrous buzz. Or maybe that’s just the hangover. Either way.

“He’s the only friend you got, Jesse,” says Tulip quietly.

“ _You’re_ the only friend I got,” Jesse protests. “It’s you and me, ‘til the end of the world.”

“It ain’t, though. Not anymore. Not for a while now. And you know it.”

There’s another lingering pause which has Cassidy itching to free himself from this situation, and he’s calculating how convincingly he can fake just waking up when Jesse startles him and Tulip both by saying, “Do you love him?”

“What?!” Tulip blurts.

It’s like a stone dropping into the pit of his stomach. Cassidy feels like he’s going to be sick.

“Where the hell did that even—” Tulip demands.

“All _right_ , enough,” Cassidy groans as he pushes the coat off, propping himself up on his elbows. Jesse and Tulip both jolt at the sudden movement, twisting back to stare at him. Cassidy peers groggily out the back windows so he doesn’t have to look at them. It’s getting on in the day, almost evening now, and there’s no sun coming through. Small favors.

“Listen, Tulip,” says Cassidy, angling to sound as casual as if he’d been involved the whole time, “if it’s all the same t’you, I don’t really wanna hear any more o’ this. Thanks very much for savin’ me an’ all, but now if you could just roll me out the car to the side of the road, I’ll find me own way.”

Tulip is in constant wide-eyed motion, her gaze flicking between him and the road. “How long you been awake?” she asks uneasily.

“What, with you two barkin’ like that?” Cassidy pushes himself up into a sitting position, wincing as his back cracks. “Long enough.”

Jesse gives Tulip a pointed look, and she keeps her eyes on the road, her shoulders tight. Beating herself up over it. “Cass—”

“Look, I don’t want to talk about it, all right?” He digs around in the coat pockets for a cigarette or maybe a joint. Finding neither, he shoves the coat aside and returns to looking out the window at the low, thickening fog, the darkening sky, the miles of thick pines and overgrown sugarcane fields stretching in all directions. “Seriously, you don’t even have to slow down that much, I’ll just dive right out an’ I’ll be outta your hair.”

“Cass,” Tulip says sharply, “we’re not leaving you on the side of the damn road.”

Of course she can’t just let it be brutal and quick. Not like when she drove him out to the bus stop, broke his heart, and cut him loose. No, now that he wants it, now she has to tug back. “Tulip, I told you, I don’t wait around for people, all right?” He jabs a hand toward Jesse, who’s now sitting very still and not looking at either of them, like he’s just waiting for it to be over. “If he doesn’t want me around, I don’t want to be around, and I don’t need your pity either.”

That gets her attention. She twists fully around and levels an incredulous stare at him. “ _Excuse_ me?”

Jesse sits up straight, still staring ahead. “Tulip—”

“No, we’re talkin’ about this now.” Her eyes cut into Cassidy, make him want to shrink into the seat. “No one’s going anywhere. Not until we hash this o—”

“ _Tulip!”_

A violent _thud_ rocks the car, and Tulip shrieks and slams on the brake, and Cassidy’s body is thrown forward, colliding with the front seats with such force as might kill a regular human; he’s just glad not to go through the whole windshield. The car screeches to a halt, the engine dies abruptly, and Cassidy finds himself in a heap of limbs on the backseat floor, rattled and certain that in the split second before he went airborne he saw something through the windshield, whatever it was they struck, just a blur of pale, unnatural, impossibly fast movement.

“What the bloody hell was that!” he yelps, struggling to pull himself up. “ _Je_ sus, is everyone alive?”

Jesse groans loudly, and Cassidy sees him wincing as he massages his neck. Both he and Tulip seem fine, considering—buckled in and whole, not even the tiniest trace of blood. The airbags haven’t even deployed. It sure seemed like a hell of a crash, but maybe that’s just because he was a bloody rag doll for it.

“ _Fuck_.” Tulip practically spits the word, shaky and hassled. She unbuckles herself with some difficulty and spills out of the car, staggering around to get a look at the front of it. Cassidy pulls himself up just enough to look out, and sees only Tulip standing there. Whatever they hit, whatever it was he saw, if it was ever really there, it’s gone now.

“There was something—” Jesse struggles to get his breathing under control, “—something in the road.”

“Like a deer?” Tulip is still staring at the front of the car with a strange look on her face, more perplexed than anything else.

“No,” says Jesse, a little too quiet; Cassidy doesn’t think she’s heard him. “Definitely not like a deer.”

“I don’t get it,” says Tulip, too absorbed in her own investigation to pay him much mind either way. She makes a vague gesture toward the car, seeming to lose the energy for it halfway through. “That—Whatever we hit sounded _big_. There ain’t even a dent.”

“Will it start up again?” says Jesse. Cassidy glances up at him, frowning. He only caught a glimpse, but Jesse was staring straight ahead. He _saw_ it, and now he’s pointedly not talking about it. Cassidy wants to ask, but a larger part of him isn’t keen on reminding Jesse he’s here.

“I didn’t turn it off,” she says distractedly. Cassidy catches sight of her ducking down, presumably to check underneath the car. “I don’t know why it would just turn off like that.”

“Is it the battery?” wonders Jesse as she comes back around and drops herself back into the driver’s seat.

“Crash shouldn’t have caused that,” she mutters. She turns the keys a few times, but there’s nothing—it doesn’t even bother to turn over. It’s just inert.

“Shit.” She sits there for a moment, at a loss, then yanks the keys out and gets up again. Returning to the front of the car, she pries open the hood. A moment of continued silence doesn’t exactly bode well. Cassidy finally heaves himself up onto the seat, checking himself over. He’s definitely more banged up than either of them, but he came out all right even so. Seems lucky—or astronomically unlikely, even by his standards.

“See anything?” Jesse seems reluctant to leave the car, but he does when Tulip doesn’t answer him, leaving the passenger door open as if he plans to jump back in at a moment’s notice.

“This doesn’t make any _sense_ ,” she says as Jesse joins her. “It’s gotta be the battery, but just outta the blue like that…?”

“Well, what do we do about it?” says Jesse with a touch of impatience.

“Call for a tow, I guess,” she says, sounding less-than-thrilled by the idea. “I don’t know what else. There’s nothing around us for miles and I ain’t seen another car in at least three hours.”

Cassidy sighs and climbs out of the backseat rather gingerly, his legs a bit weak. The sky is darkening fast, and he squints as he surveys their surroundings. They’ve come to a halt in front of a wild tangle of overgrown trees, which at first just looks like an unruly patch of nature, but something about it draws his interest. As he peers closer, searching for anything of note, he eventually spots the faint line of a little stone path leading into it.

He turns back and sees both Tulip and Jesse fiddling with their phones, Jesse standing there with tense shoulders, Tulip wandering around in a tight circle and occasionally holding her phone up to the sky the way people do. Cassidy doesn’t have the heart to tell her that doesn’t actually make a bloody difference.

“Anything?” she says, frustrated.

Jesse sighs and slips his phone back into his pocket. “Nope.”

“Well, that’s just great.” Tulip pockets hers as well and stands there with her hands on her hips, regarding the wilderness with deep resentment. “So what, then, we just walk until we find a place with a phone?”

“Uh, actually—” Cassidy clears his throat, drawing both their attention. He avoids making eye contact with either of them, turning to point out his discovery. “Might want to have a look here.”

They come up to join him, footsteps crunching as the pavement turns to underbrush and gravel. Tulip leans down to inspect the path, then straightens up, fixing the overgrown woods ahead with a critical stare. No one says anything, like the discovery is simply beyond comment. Then Tulip gives an annoyed little shrug and steps forward, pushing low branches and vines out of the way as she moves. It’s only a moment before she all but disappears from view.

Cassidy glances back at Jesse, who meets him with a mild sort of consternation before shaking his head and following after her. Cassidy tries not to think about how this would be an ideal opportunity to walk away and let them sort this out, to cut ties with finality. He just stuffs his hands in his pockets and slouches after them.

The path winds a ways deeper into the overgrowth before they can see what lies at the end of it: rising above the treetops is an old Victorian-style house, looking about three stories high yet completely obscured from the road. It stands there, the sinister spectre of every haunted house one could possibly imagine, with darkened windows and visible deterioration, vines and ivy slowly devouring the sides of it. Cassidy stops short as soon as it comes into view, giving it a very scrutinous once-over. This place is either completely abandoned or inhabited by something bad—ghosts or monsters or some lone Mrs. Bates type. Now that he’s confronted by it, taking into account its surroundings and the manner in which they fell into its radius, he’s not sure what else he could have expected.

“Well,” says Jesse; he and Tulip have halted as well, both staring up at the place. “They probably don’t have a phone.”

“Nope,” agrees Tulip. Regardless, she continues, approaching the sagging porch.

“Hold on, then,” says Cassidy, jogging up beside her, “maybe we’d be better off walking somewhere, eh?”

“ _We_ , huh?” She gives him a pointed look, and he wilts a little.

“I just mean—” He catches himself as Jesse brushes past him, following Tulip up the rotting steps. Cassidy rolls his eyes and keeps after them. “Are we really going in there?”

“ _You’re_ the one who found it, Cass.”

Cassidy sputters. “Well, that was before I knew it was the house on bloody haunted hill!” He reaches out and grabs Tulip’s arm just as she’s about to knock. She spears him with another hard stare, but he refuses to be daunted this time. “Listen, the car broke down for no reason, we’ve got no mobile reception, _he_ saw something weird in the road that he won’t talk about now—” He flaps his free hand at Jesse, who looks almost comically affronted at the accusation. “Have you never seen a bloody horror film? This is the house we all get murdered in.”

“ _Cass_.” She yanks her arm free. “It’s about to be dark, and I don’t wanna be wandering up the damn road in the middle of nowhere, all right? Especially not if there’s weird shit in the road.” This with a dubious glance at Jesse. “We can squat here for the night and figure out what to do in the morning.”

“That’s what they all say,” says Cassidy, “right before they get picked off one by one. Every time.”

“Nobody’s gettin’ _murdered_. Have you _met_ us?” She draws her gun and holds it up for helpful emphasis. “We got a vampire, the Word o’ God, and _me_. It’s gonna be fine.”

The mention of Genesis comes as a surprise, and Cassidy glances at Jesse, his eyebrows raised. “Oh. Got that back, have you?”

Jesse just shrugs like he’d rather not talk about it. At least he’s consistent.

Cassidy huffs out a breath and returns his hands to his pockets, only a bit sullenly. Having Genesis on their side is, at least, a mild comfort. “Well, all right, then. When you put that way.”

This settled, Tulip tucks her gun back into the waistband of her jeans and knocks firmly at the door, which might have been red once, and is now just a mess of peeling paint. She barely has to touch it before it swings open, its hinges creaking loudly. A draft of musty, warm air bursts out to greet them from within.

They all stand there for a moment, Tulip’s fist still raised.

“Okay,” says Jesse. “You gotta admit that was a little creepy.”

“No I _don’t_ gotta,” says Tulip stubbornly. “If y’all wanna sleep in the car, be my guest.” And she tugs on her jacket and strolls on in.

“Fuck’s sake,” mutters Jesse, and follows her.

Cassidy stands on the porch for a moment, watching as his friends—companions—whatever they are—disappear into the dark. He _could_ sleep in the car at that, though the prospect of seeing that pale, fast-moving whatever-it-was again isn’t exactly a tantalizing prospect. He could just leave. Maybe without a word, and go somewhere they’d never find him. They can take care of themselves. It’ll be better on his own. Anything would be better than watching the two of them get closer and closer while he just gets further away. Could find somewhere to hole up alone for the next hundred years until they don’t remember him, until they’re gone for good. Maybe in the next decade it’ll even stop hurting.

For a moment he almost thinks he can convince himself of this.

“Shite,” he whispers and steps in after them.

The house’s interior has been gutted, mostly stripped of furniture and possessions, wallpaper peeling, rugs worn down to tatters. Judging by the way the remaining furniture is strewn about, the place has been picked over by scavengers a few times; judging by the even layer of dust coating everything, it hasn’t been picked over in a long while. Some of the floorboards have been pried up, making for treacherous footing; what remains creaks audibly beneath their feet. Jesse pulls out his lighter to give them a bit of illumination; Cassidy squints into the shadows created by the little flickering flame, trying to keep watch for any hint of foreign movement.

They take some time to explore the place, which, despite its generally ominous ambiance, seems normal enough as well as fully abandoned. Cassidy finds it in himself to relax by degrees, though he never quite manages to quell the sense that this is a bad idea. Bad ideas being his general M.O., this doesn’t exactly count for much.

With nothing to be found on the upper levels but unstable architecture, they finally reconvene downstairs, trying to find a spot to make their base. If they have to sleep on the floor, they may as well do it within reach of their exit. Adjacent to the main entrance and foyer is their best option, what was likely once a sitting room, now a mass grave of old dining chairs, piled up in a broken heap in the middle of the floor. Tulip nudges at the debris with the toe of her boot, then approaches the stone fireplace, shining the light of her phone up into the shaft of the chimney.

“Well, it’ll be smokey,” she says, her voice echoing a little. She pulls out and nods toward the front window, shattered a long time ago and half-swarmed over with vines. “But at least we got ventilation.” She steps back from it and looks at the two of them. “You guys wanna make us a fire?” Without waiting for an answer, she starts heading toward the next room.

“Where are you going?” Jesse asks as she walks past.

“I’m lookin’ for booze,” she says, already disappearing into what’s left of the kitchen.

“The hell makes you think they got any of _that_ left?” Jesse calls after her, though he clearly doesn’t expect an answer, already inspecting the pile of chairs.

“Actually, I think we should all stick tog—and she’s gone.” Cassidy sighs and looks at Jesse, who seems disinclined to follow her, and Cassidy sure isn’t about to do so without him.

“She’ll be fine,” says Jesse, mild but firm, not quite meeting his gaze. “You wanna help me with this?”

As olive branches go, it’s pretty unremarkable, but it’s something. Cassidy shrugs noncommittally and joins him. Jesse rips up the pages of a few books that weren’t cleaned out in the scavenging while Cassidy breaks apart the chairs. It only takes them a few minutes, but the silence grates until Cassidy decides he can’t handle it anymore.

“So,” he says, watching Jesse arrange their makeshift kindling and firewood in the fireplace. “What happened with your family, then?”

Jesse spares him the briefest of glances, his expression shadowed and guarded. “Killed ‘em,” he says.

“Oh, right.” Cassidy nods to himself. “Good.”

“You?”

“Oh, I fucked about a bit. Met another vampire, fell in love, but then he turned out to be a shithead and tried to kill me, so. See, he had all these little groupies he’d been turning and murdering for a while, so I turned ‘em all at once and they ate him. Then the Grail killed all of _them_ trying to get to _me_ before Tulip got me first. And that’s the lot, pretty boring stuff, really.”

“You fell in love with this guy?” Jesse says with a frown.

Cassidy raises his chin, brow furrowed. “ _That’s_ your chief takeaway from all that, is it?”

Jesse fidgets. “Just seems like… How long’d you even know him for?”

Cassidy snorts. “I fall in love at the drop of a hat, Jess. That’s the Cassidy special. Never does me a bit o’ good. I’d swear off the concept if I could.” He dips his head down with a forced smile. “We did shag in a coffin, though. That was a new one.”

“Huh.” Cassidy looks up just in time to see Jesse wrinkling his nose, and he smirks at the reaction. “Sounds crowded.”

“Crowded’s not always a bad thing.” Cassidy shifts his weight, kicking at a discarded bit of chair. Feels off, them just shooting the shit like this, like they could slip into old habits if they aren’t careful. Jesse seems keen to avoid bringing any of it up. Might be easy to roll with that, pretend it’s all water under some distant bridge. Tempting as that is, Cassidy recoils inwardly from it. He clears his throat. “Shall we light her up, then?”

Tulip was right about the state of the chimney, which leaves something to be desired; it doesn’t take long at all for the room to grow hazy with smoke, but it’s mild enough to be tolerable, and with night coming on fast, it’s necessary. Tulip returns before Cassidy has time to start worrying and presents them with two very dusty, unlabeled bottles of clear fluid, giving one to Cassidy and keeping the other for Jesse and herself.

“Found these in the basement,” she says proudly.

“Jesus, have you got a bloody death wish?” says Cassidy, faintly scandalized. “I can’t think of a worse place to go.” He gives his bottle a half-hearted shake, as though that’ll help him discern the contents. “What is it then, vodka?”

Jesse takes the bottle from Tulip and starts opening it up. “Out here? Nah. This is gonna be some quality moonshine.”

Cassidy eyes the two of them uncertainly, not sure how he feels about the prospect of drinking with them like all’s well and normal; then he realizes the only thing that could possibly improve the situation is decades-old basement hooch. He opens his bottle up and thinks about giving it a sniff before deciding he doesn’t give a shit and chugging almost half of it straight down.

“Atta boy,” says Tulip.

Cassidy pulls the bottle away with a violent hacking cough, doubling over and squinting as his eyes blur with tears. He holds out a frantic hand toward Jesse. “Oh, bloody he—” he croaks out before deteriorating into another cough. “Jesse, don’t drink that, mate.”

“That good, huh?” Jesse smirks as he raises it.

Cassidy rubs the back of his hand across his eyes and laughs weakly. “Well, I’m not an expert on the vintage,” he says, “but it’s definitely turpentine.”

Jesse freezes just as the bottle touches his lips. Tulip blinks, the smile slipping from her face.

“No way,” she says.

Cassidy clears his throat, giving the bottle a reassessing look. He can handle his turpentine with the best of them, but it’s better if he’s not expecting moonshine for it, and if he doesn’t drink half a bottle in one go. “Trust me,” he says, “I’ve had plenty.”

Jesse sniffs the bottle and gives it a severely disappointed frown. “He’s right,” he grunts.

“Well, shit,” she says, sitting herself heavily down on the floor by the fire. “So much for dinner.”

“Probably for the best,” says Jesse, settling down beside her, setting the bottle aside. He slings an arm around her shoulders, and she leans back against him. They make a pretty picture, all cozy in the firelight. Cassidy turns away, feeling unwelcome but having nowhere to retreat. He takes another, much more judicious sip of turpentine.

“Hey, what _did_ we hit, anyway?” says Tulip suddenly. “Cass says you saw it?”

Cassidy turns back to see Tulip peering up at Jesse and Jesse looking like a startled rabbit. “Oh, uh,” he says awkwardly, “no, I didn’t really—I mean, I thought I saw something, but it all happened so fast. It probably was just a deer.”

“You said it definitely _wasn’t_ a deer.” Cassidy gestures toward Jesse with the bottle, sloshing the oily resin around inside it. “You were bloody spooked by it, too.”

“Well, what I saw didn’t make _sense_ ,” says Jesse tightly, giving Cassidy a look. “And I was rattled, Cass, we all were.”

“But what _did_ you see?” Tulip insists.

Jesse pinches the bridge of his nose. He’s embarrassed, Cassidy realizes—the man walks around with a vampire and a whole entire superpower and he _still_ gets uncomfortable around anything weird.

“It looked like… I thought it was a cow at first,” he says, “‘cause it was white, like, pale. But it was more like… I dunno, like an ox.”

“An _ox_ ,” Tulip repeats incredulously.

“A big one,” says Jesse. “But it couldn’t have been, right?”

“Sure couldn’t,” says Tulip. “If we’d hit a damn ox the car would not have survived. And neither would we, probably.”

“I musta been seeing things,” Jesse concludes, seeming relieved to have Tulip confirm the insensibility of it. “It was probably a deer, and we just clipped it or something.”

“I saw it, too,” says Cassidy, before they can talk themselves any further into this hole. “Only for a split second. I saw it darting out of the way. Didn’t move right. Too fast, like.”

“You saw an ox?” says Tulip, her eyes drifting from Cassidy to the bottle of turpentine.

“Dunno what it was. But it was white, and it didn’t move like a real animal.” He shrugs and takes a drink.

“Well, whatever it was,” says Jesse, obviously eager to move on, “I’m just glad it didn’t wreck the car.”

Tulip nods, though she keeps her eyes on Cassidy. “Are you really gonna keep drinking that?” she says.

Cassidy looks at the bottle, not entirely sure why this should surprise her. “Might as well,” he says. “No reason to let it go to waste.”

She shakes her head and resettles herself comfortably against Jesse. “Well, if you’re gonna drink, you oughta come sit down. You’re makin’ me nervous, looming around like that.”

“Mm.” He avoids the suggestion for as long as he can, avoids _her_ , how nicely she and Jesse fit together and how separate it is from him. He keeps looking at the bottle for lack of anything else to look at. The idea of sitting down on the floor with them, drinking turpentine while they _cuddle_ , is about the worst thing he can think of right now. “You didn’t happen to grab my umbrella, did you? When you picked me up.”

“What?” He doesn’t look at her, but she sounds bewildered by the sudden subject shift. “Uh—no, I just threw the coat over you and dragged you in. Sorry.” She hesitates, no doubt waiting for him to look at her or speak, neither of which he does. “I think we got one of your old ones in the trunk, though.”

“All right.” Cassidy nods, decision made. “Then I think I’m gonna head out.”

“Wait, what?” Tulip sounds like she doesn’t believe him, and when he looks at her he sees her half-smiling. “Cass. C’mon. You weren’t really serious about all that, were you?”

“Oh, I wasn’t, was I?” He takes a reckless, frustrated swig from his bottle. “And why shouldn’t I be? This little thing of ours, it’s, it’s sort of run its course now, don’t you think?”

“No, I _don’t_ ,” says Tulip, her tone taking on a much harder edge.

Cassidy takes a few pacing steps away from her, moving around what remains of the chair pile and vaguely toward the main foyer, but stops before he gets very far. He stands there a moment, regarding the distance still to go, unable to make himself cross it.

There’s a moment of silence, and then a scuffling sound and a grunt from Jesse as Tulip scrambles to her feet. Quieter, with a faint nervousness that both catches him off guard and is absolute torture to hear, she says, “We want you with us.”

“Oh, right.” Anger boils up from somewhere, anger he doesn’t want and isn’t able to stop. He spins around to face her. “Because what would you do without me, right? Your lying junkie vampire.” This with a sharp glance at Jesse, who is still sitting on the floor, now frozen and staring back at him. “I guess I am pretty useful when you need someone to take a bullet for your scams, or… or to taste-test your turpentine.” He shakes the bottle at them, now sweating a little, feeling a prickle of nervous energy as he realizes how stupid he sounds. He stumbles back, some of the fight draining out of him, and looks at his feet, his mismatched shoes.

“You’ve saved both our lives, Cass,” Tulip says, still horribly quiet. She doesn’t sound nervous anymore, now it’s something much worse. Now she sounds hurt.

“Yeah, well. Now you’ve saved mine a couple times.” Cassidy sniffs and turns back on his heel, pivoting, almost physically pushing himself away. “I think we’re even.”

“Cassidy—”

Cassidy sways to an unsteady halt when Jesse’s voice cuts in. He keeps his back turned as Jesse stands up. He’s not totally sure what to expect, but he hopes it’s something that’ll make him angrier. Make him take a swing, something he’ll regret, something that’ll push Jesse away, and not out of some bloody stupid spiteful effort to drive him away from Tulip, no, that ship has long sailed and he was an idiot to ever have been on it. Something that’ll make Tulip mad, too. Let her see the man Jesse sees, so she’ll never sound hurt again, she’ll never call and call and try so hard to make him feel better, she’ll just be angry and that’ll be right and that’ll be easy.

Jesse takes his time, whether it’s to pick his words or just for dramatic effect, but finally he says, “Listen, I… I know things got bad. Things have been a mess for a while now, and I… I blamed a lot of it on you, but I know that wasn’t right. ‘Cause it was me, too.” The floorboards creak, like Jesse is shifting his weight, and Cassidy realizes with an uncomfortable shift in his expectations that all that pausing had just been sheer bloody awkwardness. “I said a lotta things that hurt you, and… and I _did_ a lotta things that hurt you, too, both of you. And I know you hate me for it all, and… and you’re right to. I’m not sure I can make it right. But I wanted to say that I’m sorry for it all.” He pauses and draws a breath like he’s trying to rein himself in. “I _am_ sorry,” he insists.

Cassidy stares, wide-eyed, at the cracked wainscoting on the wall ahead of him like it’s somehow to blame. He cannot fucking believe this.

“Where the bloody hell did all this come from?” he says, turning around to face them once again. “Are you serious? After all that, you’re sorry?” He takes a few sharp steps toward Jesse until he’s right up in his face. Jesse doesn’t flinch. “You _dismembered me_.”

“Yeah, well, I had to!” Jesse snaps, immediately and satisfyingly on the defensive. “I was tryin’ to protect you!”

Cassidy snorts derisively and reels back a step, which brings Tulip back into his eye-line. She’s standing a few feet from them, the firelight flickering warmly over her as she stares at Jesse with an expression Cassidy’s not quite sure how to read. Some shock, some anger, who knows. Odds are, as always, there’s context he doesn’t have.

Cassidy feels an acute sense that he should quit while he’s behind, walk away and leave them to sort their lives out without him. He hovers between options, too many other pieces of him dragging him back, telling him to stay, to throw a punch, to accept the apology, to let it go. Instead of doing any of those things, he takes another swig of turpentine.

“It doesn’t matter,” he says finally, aware that his senses are starting to fog just a little. “You were right about me, anyway. About me being a bastard. I… I don’t want your apology, mate.” He’s back to staring at his shoes. He can feel both their eyes on him now, and he wishes they wouldn’t. “There’s nothing left for me, all right? I don’t want to be your third bloody wheel anymore.” He finally forces himself to face Tulip directly. “This was over the moment you told me you didn’t love me. All I need now is to just get used to that. You never should have brought me back.”

“ _Cass_ ,” Tulip protests with a curious edge of desperation, but she’s cut off when Jesse says, “Wait, what? When did that happen?”

Cassidy drags his open hand over his face. “Oh, shite. Of course she didn’t tell you.”

“You love her?” Jesse doesn’t even sound angry; he sounds bewildered, like the concept is too difficult for him to grasp. He sounds… he sounds _disappointed_.

Cassidy isn’t interested in analyzing it. “Christ, it doesn’t matter. She doesn’t love me, all right? You were never even on the market and she doesn’t want me and I don’t want to just stand around here bein’ your bloody pal. It just—It hurts too much, all right?” He knows he’s flushed now. Tipsy on goddamn poison, babbling and giving too much away. He needs to get out of here as quick as possible. He turns away.

“Wait,” Jesse blurts out.

Keep walking. _Keep walking, you stupid bloody eejit._

Cassidy stops.

“What do you mean I—I’m not on the market?”

Fuck. Cassidy tips his head back to stare at the ceiling, and keeps it tipped back as he takes another drink.

“Cassidy—?”

“Well you’re _not!”_ explodes out of him, and he whips around so fast that it makes him dizzy, and actually manages to make Jesse flinch. “I gave up on you right away, Jess, I’ve lived too bloody long to waste my time chasin’ down a straight man. Jesus, that’s not—It doesn’t _matter_.”

“ _Cass_ ,” Tulip cuts in, “are you in love with _both_ of us?”

Fuck it. Cassidy flings his arms out in a violent gesture, almost losing his grip on the bottle. “Yeah, all right? Fine, cards on the goddamn table. I fell in love with you both the moment I met you. It’s what I _do_. An’ I let myself get tricked into thinking I could have at least _one_ of you, and I did a lot of stupid shite to try and get there, and I regret that, and now I just want to be _away_ from it, and you _won’t bloody let me._ ”

They both stand there, staring at him with twin expressions of shock, mercifully, _horribly_ silent.

“Just—just let me go,” he says tiredly, and he turns around one last time, every shred of him determined toward finality. “Please, I’m fuckin’ beggin’ you, just forget about me.”

“No,” Jesse says rather forcefully, and suddenly there’s footsteps coming up behind him, and Jesse’s hand wraps around his wrist. “No, you’re not just walkin’ away from this. Not after that. Not until you hear what I’ve got to say back.”

“Oh, tempting offer, padre, but I’ve heard enough.” Cassidy twists his arm roughly out of Jesse’s grip and takes another swig of turpentine, some of it spilling down his chin as he staggers out of the siting room and into the foyer, heading for the front door.

“No you have _not_ ,” snaps Jesse, making another grab for him. “Look, you don’t—I’ve had a lotta time to think about things since we saw each other last, and you don’t know me _nearly_ as well as you—”

“Fuck _off!”_ Cassidy shoves him back as hard as he can, and Jesse staggers back, right into Tulip, who’s coming up fast behind them.

“Cassidy, _don’t!”_ she shouts, there’s that desperation again. He wills himself not to give into it. He reaches for the door.

What happens next happens very fast. Cassidy’s fingers have barely brushed the door handle. The room—the whole _house_ —shudders all around them and beneath their feet, and a low, thick rumbling fills the space around them, not quite like thunder, not quite like a roar. The walls that bracket the door, plaster showing through stripped and faded wallpaper—it isn’t right to say they _jump_ , or _slide_ , _flow_ or even _stretch_ , because it happens too quickly to be categorized as a kind of movement. It isn’t, and then it is; before any of them have even processed the surrounding sound and fury, the walls have covered the door, or perhaps just replaced it, leaving no cracks, not even a break in the pattern of the peeling wallpaper. As though there was never a door to begin with.

“Jesus _Christ_ ,” yelps Cassidy, jumping back as though he’s been stung, staring at what now lies in front of him. “What the—” He slowly tips his gaze down to the mostly empty bottle he’s still clutching.

“What the _fuck_ was that,” Tulip finishes for him, drawing his attention back. The two of them are staring past him at the vanished door. She takes a step forward, peering at it in the faint fire light coming from the adjacent room. “Some kinda… trick mechanism?”

“Never seen _anything_ like that,” Jesse says quietly.

Tulip reaches out and gingerly touches the wall, which remains a seemingly innocuous wall. “But how—”

“Because the house is bloody well haunted!” Cassidy turns on his heel and storms back into the living room, half-wishing he could manifest a storm cloud over his head. “I _told_ you.” He cuts for the shattered window.

“Haunted houses aren’t _real_ , Cass,” Jesse argues, trailing after him.

“Oh, right, you’ve got a resurrected girlfriend, a witch for a grandma, and some kind of angel-demon lovechild in your guts that gives you _mind control powers_ , but _this_ is just a bridge too far. D’you know it turns out vampires can drain other vampires so they can hypnotize people and fuckin’ fly and turn into talking bloody cats? Magic is real, you dickhead.”

“Cass, calm _down_ ,” Tulip says irritably, pushing past him and toward the window. “What are you even talkin’ about?”

“You learn that from the guy you fucked in a coffin?” says Jesse.

“The guy you _what_?” Tulip swings around to stare at him, like _this_ is suddenly the issue here.

“Technically he did the fucking,” Cassidy mutters, “in every sense.” He steps back around Tulip, takes another drink to finish off his bottle, and tosses it to the open window, where it catches on the netted tangle of vines and bounces right back inside, smashing at his feet.

Tulip jerks back from the shattering glass and Jesse grits out “Fuck’s sake!” just as the fire behind them dims down to embers, plunging them into darkness with only a faint orange glow to see by. Cassidy blinks as his eyes start to adjust, and in the murky shadows he realizes the plants are moving, perhaps _growing_ , pulsing inward and filling the once-open space of the window, thin strands spreading over the interior wall like dark veins. He stares at it, transfixed, horrified. And then the rumbling returns.

It is much louder this time, and it sounds like several things at once—like the rumble of an earthquake and a roll of considerably less-distant thunder, and the sickening crunches and scrapes of wood and stone shifting around them, and, most particularly, the growl of an animal. All three of them have spun around to face the darkened room, shadows stretching unnaturally up the walls as everything seems to shift around them. Cassidy can’t tell how much of it is happening and how much of it is thanks to pounding paint thinner.

“What the shit is this,” Tulip says in a low, carefully measured voice.

“Quiet,” hisses Jesse, pointing into the thickening shadows ahead. He makes a quick motion at Tulip, who very slowly reaches back to draw her gun.

Cassidy squints toward where Jesse’s pointing. There’s movement in the dark, something inching toward them with an uneven gait. He stands frozen, waiting for something horrible to happen as it is surely bound to. Beside him, Jesse holds his breath. Beside Jesse, Tulip slowly raises her gun.

A figure steps into what’s left of the fire light, shaped like—Cassidy can’t keep track of what it’s shaped like. It seems like it’s actually growing as it comes into view, from something small and harmless and low to the ground into an enormous hulking thing. Pale white, but somehow not reflecting the light like it ought to, blending into the darkness. Then he realizes it’s starting to look like an ox.

“Shite,” he whispers.

“That’s—” Jesse cuts himself off quickly. At a glance Cassidy can see his wide, dark eyes, a look of fear that doesn’t seem to sit right on his features, like it doesn’t suit him.

The ox trembles, but not like a shivering animal, rather its outline, its shape tremors and ripples unnaturally before it starts to change again, thinning out into something deer-like, that is until it starts growing upright, rising on its spindly hind legs.

Something snaps simultaneously in all three of them. Cassidy reels back with a shrill “ _Fuck_ that!” as Jesse yells “ _Shoot it!”_ and the gun goes off. Tulip trips back, her aim completely, uncharacteristically off, the shot going wide and striking the wall past the thing. The creature, its body now human-shaped but _long_ , thin, razor-sharp, its head much too big and predatory, lurches toward them with a horrible splintering scream and the house bends around them, walls curving in, floor stretching and tearing, the ceiling pressing down.

“Get out, get out, get the fuck out!” Cassidy babbles frantically, grabbing at both of them and tugging them along toward the foyer. From there they can get somewhere _else_ , maybe find another exit, _something_ , as long as it’s away from _here_. He drags them toward what he thinks is the right way, too dark to see now, and he lets go of one of them and reaches out to feel for the wall. Finding nothing, he instead stumbles into a new space, not the foyer at all but something different, a space with no light and no frame of reference. Another blood-freezing growl sounds from somewhere behind him, and whichever companion he still has a grip on wrenches from his grasp in a desperate forward motion. Cassidy follows suit, bolting blindly ahead, the only object in his mind being to put as much space between himself and that goddamn whatever-the-shit-cryptid as he possibly can.

He runs for what feels like an inordinately long time, and after a while he gets the sense he’s running in an upward direction, on an incline of some kind. None of this feels possible, considering his vague understanding of the house’s external width and shape, but clearly the architecture here is living by its own anarchistic code, so that’ll be had with several grains of salt. He runs until he can’t hear anything behind him, can’t hear anything at all but his feet pounding against the wood and his blood pounding in his ears, and then, finally, chest burning, he crashes to a halt, doubling over and straining to breathe.

When he looks up, the empty void of the tunnel is gone. Now he’s in a room—an ordinary room, by all appearances, with all its dimensions intact, an unbroken hard wood floor and walls that stand at the correct angles. The only piece of furniture in it is a dull blue couch, looking worn but not nearly as old or tattered as it ought to. It stands a few feet from the wall to Cassidy’s left, facing toward it, which is vaguely off-putting. There is also a floor lamp with a tasseled red shade like someone’s granny might have, standing against the far wall. It takes Cassidy a few seconds longer than it should to realize he can see all of this because the lamp is _on_ , bathing everything in dim reddish light, despite there being no visible plug or outlet, despite this house being old as sin, _definitely_ disconnected from any kind of electrical network, and ostensibly abandoned.

“Where are we?” Jesse murmurs from beside him, hunched over and catching his breath.

“I don’t—I don’t know,” says Cassidy, studying the room, trying to piece together all the myriad things about it that seem innocuous but are nonetheless _wrong_.

“Where’s Tulip?” Jesse asks, and Cassidy turns around.

“I thought… I thought she was behind…” He stares at the wall directly behind him, the wall he came through. There is no portal, no doorway, not even a window, and no Tulip. As he spins around again, another of those innocuous wrongs clicks belatedly in his mind. All four of this room’s walls are identically white, blank, and devoid of entry point. There is no way in or out.

“Oh, no,” he says with quiet horror which very quickly rises in volume and pitch. “Oh, Christ, there’s no way out, there’s no— _fuck!”_ He hurls himself at the wall they came through, beating at it with his fists, punching as hard as he can, leaving a few cracks in the plaster and a bit of blood on his knuckles. “Tulip!” he screams, praying she can hear him, that she’s not—that she’s still— “ _Tulip!”_

Jesse grabs at him, dragging him back. “Cassidy, stop! You’re gonna break your hands before you get through there!”

“So what if I fucking do?!” Cassidy snarls at him, struggling to twist out of his grasp. He’s stronger than Jesse; he’s also addled, and Jesse’s a better fighter.

“ _Stop it!”_ Jesse wrestles him down to his knees, his arms locked under Cassidy’s, forcing him to be still. “We can’t get through there,” he hisses. “We’re in a cage right now. We have to take a minute to breathe, and—”

“Breathe?!” Cassidy almost laughs, pulling against him but too uncoordinated and manic to break free. “We’re sealed the fuck in! We’ve probably only got like an hour of air and Tulip’s out there with that _thing_ , and—and—” His resolve crumbles and the ferocity drains from him, leaving him a slumped mass of weight in Jesse’s arms. “This is my fault,” he whispers, his voice shaking. “I—I let her go, I thought I had both of you, I reached out to feel my way in the dark and, and I let her—”

“Cass, it’s okay,” says Jesse firmly, loosening his hold by degrees. “It’s gonna be okay. Tulip’s strong, she can handle herself.”

Cassidy lets himself go limp enough that Jesse finally releases him, taking a step back. Cassidy kneels there in a heap for a moment, staring at the floor and the blood on his hands. “I know she can,” he mumbles. “But she’s alone and we have no bloody idea what we’re up against.”

Jesse steps around him to examine the crack he left in the wall. “She’ll be all right,” he says, like it’s an afterthought.

Cassidy stares at him. “How can you be sure?”

Jesse straightens up and turns around to meet his eyes. “Because I need to.”

The answer surprises Cassidy, though it really shouldn’t. He can’t argue with it, can’t do anything but hold the stare until he finally can’t anymore, and tears his eyes away. The silence that settles between them is startling, overwhelming, filling Cassidy with a sense of complete isolation.

Jesse seems to be equally ill at ease with the quiet. “This house keeps… doin’ stuff, right?” he says. “Movin’ around? It’s gotta let us outta here sometime.”

“Right,” huffs Cassidy, staring at the improbably unscuffed floor. “Or maybe this is where we die. At least the air’ll run out before one of us has to eat the other. Or maybe the walls’ll just start closin’ in on us like we’re in the bloody… Death Star trash compactor.”

“Well, don’t give it ideas,” says Jesse mildly.

“I’ve gotta break outta here, Jess,” says Cassidy, pulling his hands into fists, worn-down fingernails biting dully into his palms. “I don’t know what else to do.”

“Just… just give it a minute. There’s gotta be something we can figure out.” Jesse’s pacing now. Cassidy tilts his head up to watch him surreptitiously. The way he seems to have immediately locked down, entered some kind of survivability mode, and yet there’s this carefully quelled anxiety in him—this isn’t discipline, it’s experience. He’s had a history with this kind of predicament.

“You saw that thing, right?” Jesse says, apparently eager for _some_ kind of forward movement. “What _was_ that?”

“I have _no_ idea.” With a grunt, Cassidy picks himself up off the floor, looks resentfully around the room, and wanders over toward the sofa. He doesn’t quite trust it, but it’s a more attractive option than ‘frantic pacing’ and ‘pathetic floor heap.’ “Some kinda…” He makes a vague gesture like he’s searching for a word, when there isn’t one to be found. “It looked like… like Slenderman, but with a goddamn wolf head.” He settles a bit uneasily on the arm of the sofa.

Jesse’s stopped pacing now, looking at him. “Werewolf?” he suggests.

“Oh bloody hell, I hope not.” Cassidy manages a half-hearted ghost of a laugh, then, too exhausted to fight it, lets himself tip backwards until he’s lying across the couch with his legs hanging over the arm. “They always look shite in films. If real werewolves end up being terrible little stick people with giant wolf heads I’m going to be very disappointed.”

There’s a pause and a few creaks, Jesse shifting his weight again, before he says, “Ain’t vampires and werewolves always, you know, at war or something?”

Cassidy’s eyes fly open and he immediately grips the back of the couch and pulls himself back up. “What?!”

Jesse manages to look both defensive and embarrassed, fidgeting irritably with his shirt cuffs. “Just—you know, it’s always like that in, uh, movies,” he says, visibly regretting every word as he utters it.

Cassidy narrows his eyes, giving Jesse a profoundly reassessing stare. “Are you a fan of _Twilight_ , Jesse Custer?” he says with deep suspicion.

“What?! No!” Jesse reels back a step, now caught between insulted and panicked. He grasps vacantly at nothing for a moment while Cassidy continues to squint accusingly at him, and he finally relents: “ _Underworld_ ,” he grumbles. “You know, with, uh, Kate Beckinsale.”

“Yeah, I’m familiar.” Cassidy rolls his eyes. Fucking vampire movies. “Christ.”

“Look, I like action movies, all right?!” Jesse snaps.

“Well, _no_ , I never even knew werewolves were a thing before,” says Cassidy, flopping back down, in no mood to persist with this topic. “I don’t even know if that’s what this is. Turns into other animals, and… and moves houses around, shite, it could be anything, I don’t know.” He trails off, staring at the featureless ceiling, imagining it bursting open. At least it’d be a bloody way out.

“We’re gonna get outta here, Cass,” says Jesse, like a bloody mind-reader. “Tulip will find us, or we’ll figure something out, or… Something will happen.”

“Great,” mutters Cassidy. “Fantastic sermon there, padre, I feel a whole lot better.”

“Well I don’t know what else to say, all right?!” There’s a pause, then Jesse’s stupid shiny shoes take several even steps against the wood before he’s there at the back of the couch, peering cautiously down at Cassidy. “Do you really love her?” he says.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Jess.” Cassidy immediately rolls onto his side, but finds the uncanny proximity of the wall unnerving, and slides off the couch entirely. He gets up and walks quickly away from the couch, toward the nothing on the other side of the room, anywhere so long as it’s _away from this_. “I don’t want to do all this again.”

“No, I’m not—I’m just _asking_ ,” Jesse says, turning but not following him. “Was that true? Do you really love her?”

Cassidy stops, staring at the wall, the floor, the empty fucking room. His shoulders sag slightly. “Yes,” he says softly. “I really, really do.”

“Then you know exactly how I feel right now.” There’s more steps, Jesse coming toward him, but not too close. “You’re not alone with it, all right? I’m scared, too.”

Cassidy shuts his eyes tightly against this. All this goddamn earnestness. It’s too much after everything, the whole course of his relationship with Jesse bloody Custer, the slow, miserable descent from charm to affection to grudging friendship to resentment to anger and finally fucking agony. It’s just too much, and it won’t stop coming. There’s nowhere to hide from it in this stupid little room, he can’t run from it or push it away, and if he lashes out to hurt it’ll hurt him too, every step of the way.

He sighs, still keeping his back turned. “Look, just… What did you want to say before? Downstairs, or… wherever that was.” He turns halfway, slowly, forcing himself to put Jesse in his eye-line. “Just get it over with.”

Jesse looks a little taken aback, but he doesn’t retreat from the invitation. He spends an uncomfortable moment studying Cassidy, then says haltingly, “I… I wanted to tell you I… I know it might be too late to apologize, but I meant what I said. I’ve been a bad friend to you, and I wasn’t good to Tulip, either. And I was angry, and scared I was gonna lose her, scared to see Gran’ma again. And… I wasn’t ready to hear what you told me when we got there.” He looks down at the floor, some point halfway between them. “I took it out on you.”

“Yeah, you’re an arsehole,” says Cassidy. “I know all that already.”

Jesse grimaces. “I’m just tryin’ to—” he says, and takes a moment to steady himself. “I’ve had a weird time of things, all right? With all the family stuff, and almost losin’ Tulip twice, and… I had a lot of time to think.” With a hesitation that seems almost like nervousness, he tips his eyes back up to Cassidy. “It… made me realize some things about myself.”

Cassidy regards him with a flat stare, determined to remain unimpressed. “What, that you’re an arsehole?”

“No.” Jesse shrugs and buries his hands in his pockets. “I always knew that.”

Another unexpected comeback, and Cassidy scowls at it. Why can’t Jesse just be an unreasonable dick? Everything is so much harder this way. “Right, you just never wanted to admit it,” he says.

Jesse’s quiet for a moment, his gaze shifting almost imperceptibly. Like he wants to maintain eye contact, but can’t quite manage. “No, I didn’t,” he says.

 _He keeps doing it._ So stupidly graceful. Cassidy almost loses his composure, feels like he wants to start climbing the damn walls, wants to shout at him: be angry, fight back, deny and deny and deny, pretend you have the moral high ground and keep it that way, so it won’t hurt so damn much to want you.

“So what was it, really?” he says tiredly, feeling the ache of defeat. “That it made you realize.”

There it is, eye contact again, steady and unwavering, the kind to make Cassidy want to sink into a hole in the ground, the same feeling he gets whenever Tulip smiles. “I realized I missed you, Cass.”

If he wasn’t so tired and so certain he was going to die here in this horrible room with this awful conversation and no hope of seeing Tulip ever again, Cassidy might have erupted at that moment, might have laughed in his face or thrown a punch just for the hell of it. All he can do is stand there coldly, barely mustering a dispassionate murmur of acknowledgment. It’s a long time before he thinks of anything to say; when he finally does, his eyes find Jesse looking desperately uncomfortable, and that’s almost enough to put a bit of life back into him.

“So why didn’t you come t’see me, then,” he says coolly, “like Tulip said she asked you?”

Jesse opens his mouth and closes it again, startled. Probably forgot Cassidy had heard all that. “Like I told her,” he says, “I had a lot goin’ on.”

“Yeah?” Cassidy manages a smirk, though it doesn’t feel quite right. “So did I.”

For a moment, mercifully, it seems like that might be it; then Jesse says, “Would you even have wanted to see me?”

“I don’t know,” sighs Cassidy with a note of impatience. “Maybe. Probably not. We’ll never know now, will we.”

With nowhere else to go, he walks toward Jesse, brushing past him, heading back for the couch. If he’s going to die he’s going to be comfortable.

“I don’t want you to leave, Cassidy,” says Jesse, stopping him in place.

“Well, you don’t get to decide that!” Cassidy wheels back around to face him. “Listen, it’s all very nice, you tellin’ me all this, an’ I’m not even sure I deserve it all. But it doesn’t matter. It’s not about all that anymore, right? I don’t _want_ to be around this anymore, Jess.” He flings a hand toward Jesse, making a gesture to encompass him and the implied person beside him, who’s _always_ beside him, ‘til-the-end-of-the-bloody-world. “I don’t want to keep watching from the sidelines while you two have each other and I have nothing.”

Jesse moves toward him again, looking pained, looking like he might even reach out to touch him. “Cass—”

“Oh, leave it out, Jesse, all right?!” Cassidy snaps, stopping him just inches away. “I told you I’m done with this. I don’t want to hear anymore, just—”

He goes abruptly silent. Jesse is still standing there, much too close, but Cassidy’s eyes are fixed on the wall past him, the wall he just walked away from. It ripples, barely visible against the homogeneous white paint, and then it _splits_ , and it’s like the world opening back up; instantly there’s a faint draft, and there’s that _noise_ again, that rumble coming from farther away now, like from deep within the earth. Jesse hears it too, and he stands frozen, not quite willing to turn and look. As Cassidy watches, he sees another passage open up, pitch dark inside, and he can just barely make out horribly slow, unnatural movement from within. A low growl fills the room, and Cassidy sees one of its long, tapered limbs shift into the lamplight, and then its big furry head questing slowly back and forth, searching.

Cassidy shifts his focus to Jesse, who’s staring to the side, like he’s trying to convince himself to turn and look. Cassidy catches his attention with a sharp but subtle jerk of his hand, and mouths as clearly as he can, _Don’t. Move._

He’s not sure it’ll work, but at this rate, they’ve got precious few options.

Jesse holds himself as still he can, and Cassidy keeps his eyes on the creature as it sifts into the room. He’s finally able to get a really good look at it, which is a miserable experience: its body does indeed look human, but elongated and horrifyingly thin, with hands and feet that are far, far too long and movements that don’t conform to anything approaching humanoid. It’s on all fours currently, stalking into the room and taking erratic lurching steps toward them. Cassidy can see its bony fingers scraping against the floor, and yet it makes almost no sound except for that persistent growl and, as it draws nearer, a faint huffing sound that he realizes is its labored breath.

Jesse is now trembling slightly, sweat visible on his forehead; there’s that fear again, looking utterly unaccustomed to his face. Cassidy can’t blame him, _knowing_ something’s behind him but unable to look. His eyes move about erratically, darting over Cassidy before trying to get a peripheral glimpse of something, anything. Cassidy holds steady, but it’s becoming rapidly clear that this is not a _Jurassic Park_ dinosaur and the whole no-movement thing is not going to save them. The portal it came through is sealing itself back up rapidly, and there’s almost no hope of getting past this thing in time. Cassidy could try to grab Jesse and make a break for it, but they’d be plowing directly through it, and they don’t even know what it can do yet, how fast it can really move if it wants to. Cassidy doesn’t have high hopes.

The only chance, then, is to wait until it’s close, to find an opportune moment, and to improvise with whatever that presents.

The creature comes closer and closer until it’s just behind Jesse, and Cassidy is gnawing at his lip, waiting for an opening, for the breath before something starts—and then it draws itself up slowly, unfurling onto its hind legs, or… well, just its legs, until it towers over Jesse. Jesse stares at Cassidy with wide open eyes, his fingers twitching. Cassidy meets his gaze and tries as hard as he can, full of fear and turpentine, to tell him silently to wait it out, keep still, just a little longer.

Its hands are so much larger than Cassidy expected, each finger nearly as long as his forearm and ending in a razor-sharp point. One hand raises and curls slowly, spider-like, over Jesse’s shoulder, and the breath Jesse had been holding shudders out of him.

It lowers its head down, its snout leaning beside Jesse’s ear, growling with its teeth bared.

Cassidy waits until the very last moment.

The jaws snap open and Cassidy lunges, one arm slamming into Jesse’s back and hurling him out of the creature’s grasp, actually catapulting him over the sofa as Cassidy follows his own momentum forward, throwing himself bodily into the beast. To his great surprise, he knocks it down to the floor and lands on top of it, and his bewilderment over this development is the only opening it needs to recover itself. Its terrible hands grasp at him as it deftly flips him down to the floor, crawling over him; the fingers scrape down his chest, tearing through his clothes like tissue paper, and before he can even think about countering he feels it bite into him. He’s almost surprised by his own voice as a scream rips out of his body. He fights back like a wild animal, but the shock of the pain is overwhelming, and he knows, with bone deep certainty, that he is going to lose.

Distantly, over the cacophony that is him screaming, he hears Jesse shout, “ _Cassidy!”_ and then “Let him go!” and then, with a familiar, earthshaking reverberation he can feel in every part of his body, _**Let him go.**_

The pain doesn’t stop, but the pressure does, as the creature instantly lifts off of him and takes a few skittering steps back. Cassidy lies gasping on the floor, his senses still flooded with agony and panic, his scattered thoughts trying to congeal back together and take stock of the state of his body. The creature is still there, still hovering, growling quietly at him, no, over him, at Jesse.

He twists his head awkwardly and finds Jesse standing there, staring it down, looking angry and terrified and unsure of how to proceed. He hesitates, and the creature snaps at him like it’s just _waiting_ , not compliant, not bent to his whim, but just on the edge of breaking free.

Jesse draws a breath. _**Go back the way you came and leave the passage open.**_

Cassidy wants to yell at him, what the fuck are you _doing, kill it_ , but he’s not quite equipped for words yet, and it’s too late, the creature is already obeying its commands, albeit begrudgingly; it snarls as it reopens the portal and disappears into it, and the continuous growl fades and the rumbling stops, and suddenly all Cassidy can hear is his own heavy, sobbing breaths.

“Cassidy!” Jesse swoops down over him, dropping to his knees and looking him over with a very unhelpful horrified expression. “Shit. You all right?”

“Oh, yeah, fuckin’ aces,” Cassidy grunts before a painful cough bursts out of him and he briefly has to restrain the urge to vomit. “Hh… didn’t want to make it kill itself or anything, eh?”

“I wasn’t really in a position to think about it,” Jesse says with a touch of reproach. “And I thought maybe gettin’ out of here was a higher priority. Dunno how long those instructions are gonna last, though, I don’t like how it was resistin’ me. We gotta get outta here an’ find Tulip, fast. Can—can you walk?”

Cassidy grits his teeth as he tries, falteringly, to push himself up. His chest and midsection are pretty much fucked, and there’s blood starting to pool thick around his body. He feels like if he actually does stand, he’s going to run the risk of losing parts of himself. He doesn’t really want to look any closer. “N-not really, no,” he huffs, collapsing back to the floor.

Jesse starts to get up, looping his arms under Cassidy’s. “Then I’ll drag you.”

“Fuck off.” Cassidy swats weakly at his hands. Much as he doesn’t relish the idea of being dragged in this state, which _also_ runs the risk of spilling bits of him around, it’s a wildly impractical move for Jesse as well. “There’s no time for that. It could come back at any moment.”

“I’ve got Genesis,” says Jesse stubbornly.

“It could find Tulip,” Cassidy snaps back.

“She’s got a gun!”

“How is she on silver bullets?!”

“Would you just let me—” Jesse puts his back into lifting Cassidy, which doesn’t do his torn-up body _any_ favors, and Cassidy has to bite back another scream, breathing heavily through his teeth. Jesse immediately lowers him back down, kneeling down beside him. “Shit, I—What do I do, Cass?! How do I—”

Cassidy grabs a fistful of Jesse’s shirt, dragging him down to better look him in the eye. “Just fuckin’ _go_ , you stupid bastard. Leave me here, all right? Maybe it’ll come back for me. Blood in the water. That’ll be your opening. You’ve got to find Tulip. You’ve got to get out.” He lets go, pushes him away, or tries to.

Jesse stares at him, his expression difficult to parse. “I’m not leaving you.”

Cassidy rolls his eyes and tries again to push him, putting a little more strain behind it. “Well there’s nothing you can do for me, all right?!” he says angrily. “Just fuck off already!”

He stays put, the arsehole, still looking down at him, the gears practically visible as they grind in his stupid head. “How… how much blood do you need?” he says shakily.

Caught off guard by the question, Cassidy frowns and looks down at himself, picking at a torn edge of his shirt. “Something like this?” he mumbles. “I dunno, a… a rabbit, maybe a squirrel. Just enough to tide me over, until I can find more. It doesn’t matter, because if you _do_ get outside, you should bloody well stay there.”

As he looks up at Jesse again, he realizes Jesse has already unbuttoned the cuff of his left sleeve, and that he’s now rolling it up. Cassidy stares at him uncomprehendingly for several long seconds. “What are you doing?” he says finally. “Jess? What are you doing?”

“What’s it look like?” Jesse spares him only the briefest of glances before he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a folding knife.

Cassidy’s breath catches in his throat. “Jesse, _no_ ,” he says, reaching out in a hopelessly uncoordinated attempt to stop him.

Jesse pulls away, unfolding the blade of the knife. “You need blood, Cass!”

“Well, I don’t want yours!” Cassidy fires back, angry, sick, desperate. He’s not even sure _why_ , there’s no time to wonder about that, he just doesn’t want this, anything but this.

Jesse, for his part, just places the knife blade carefully against the center of his forearm and looks at Cassidy with infuriating calm. “What,” he says, “is it gonna turn me?”

Oh for fuck’s sake. “ _No_ , there’s like a—a special thing I have to do for—it doesn’t matter!” Cassidy flaps a hand at him, as furious a gesture as he can manage at the moment. “I’m not drinking from you, you goddamn lunatic!”

Jesse frowns at him and looks down at his arm as he carefully, quickly makes a cut. He hisses softly and grimaces in pain, but grips his wrist and holds his arm out to Cassidy as it starts to bleed. “Yes you are,” he says.

Cassidy stares at him, now past anger and desperation, now just lost at sea. He can’t move, can’t even think about it. He can smell Jesse, and he feels well-kept parts of himself stirring. He doesn’t need this. He doesn’t want it, didn’t ask.

Jesse holds his gaze, his expression softening. “Cass,” he says quietly. “Please.”

He could. He’s being given permission; he’s being _asked_. What’s more, he needs it, or he’s fucked. And yet the idea of it, of drinking his friend’s blood, especially after the goddamn month he’s had—he can’t, he can’t, he can’t.

“Why are you doing this?” he asks, his voice barely above a whisper.

Jesse wavers, but then he jerks his arm closer. “Just do it!”

“ _No!”_ Cassidy snaps, pulling as far back as he can. “I’m not doin’ it!”

“You know I can make you,” says Jesse, and there’s no threat behind it, no cruelty—it might even be a bluff, but he has a damn good poker face and his stare is unflinching.

Cassidy’s eyes go wide. “Don’t you fucking dare,” he says coldly.

“Then drink from my goddamn arm, Cassidy!” Jesse explodes. “You probably saved my life just now, all right? Just let me help you. _Please_.”

It was a bluff; Cassidy’s almost sure of it. Jesse’s just as desperate as him. Cassidy stares at him, then at his arm, the line of red looking so dark in the lamplight, and so…

He won’t need much. Human blood is better than a rabbit or a squirrel. Just a little, and he can get out of here. And Jesse wants him to. He _wants him to_.

“You tell me if you need me to stop,” says Cassidy carefully, propping himself up as much as he can. He looks from Jesse’s arm back to him. “If I don’t, then you _make me_.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Jesse moves a little closer, trying to give him a better angle. “I trust you.”

“Oh, _now_ you trust me,” Cassidy mutters.

“Oh don’t make a big fuckin’ deal out of it, just hurry the fuck up.”

Cassidy closes his eyes. This isn’t like Mrs. Rosen or Hoover or Lisa or Denis, and it’s not like drinking from anyone he’s also planning to kill. It’s been a long, long time since he drank from someone for any other reason, and even longer since it was someone he really cared about. Not just a friend or the son he couldn’t connect with, but…

He’s leaned in toward Jesse more than he’d realized, drawn in by the smell and the muscle memory and the fact that he’s in absolutely intolerable pain. He hates this, he hates that he _ever_ did this, he hates that he gave in with Denis and that he doomed Lisa and that he’s gonna have this taste in his mouth with no reprieve in his immediate future. Why is this happening, Jesse wanting him to live, wanting him to stay, allowing this, trusting him. Why now, why like this, why why why why why.

Cassidy is careful not to use his teeth. He doesn’t have to, not really. He presses his mouth to Jesse’s arm and starts drinking, and Jesse tenses up beneath him, grunting in discomfort, flexing his hand carefully. Steadfast, unafraid. Cassidy keeps his eyes closed and tries not to make a sound, though it _does_ satisfy a distant thirst and the relief is overwhelming as his body starts to knit itself back together. He can’t quite stifle himself in the end, gasping for breath before drinking again. He’s not quite healed, not completely, but the pain is lessening and he can move again, and that’s enough, that’s enough now, that’s _enough_.

Without being asked or told, he pulls back, and Jesse lets out a heavy, staggered breath. For a moment they don’t look at each other, each breathing and looking at their respective wounds, before Cassidy manages to face him again.

“Tha—that should be enough, I think,” he says as the last of it heals. He’s going to need more at some point, but it can wait. He keeps his eyes on Jesse. “You all right, padre?”

“Yeah.” Jesse gives him a weak smile. “Just like giving a blood transfusion, right? Only more efficient.”

Cassidy smirks in spite of himself. “I guess so.”

The cut is still bleeding, and Jesse casts about awkwardly for something to bandage it with before his eyes fall on the remains of Cassidy’s shirt. Cassidy waves his hand with weary agreement and Jesse gingerly tears off the cleanest strip he can find. He bites onto part of it, awkwardly trying to wind it around his arm. Cassidy watches him for a moment before pushing himself up, grunting a bit from the effort, but capable once again.

“Oh, for—let me do that, you eejit,” he says, taking the cloth from him and binding the wound with quick, perfunctory deftness. Really ought to disinfect the shit out of it, but that’s a later problem.

“Cass?” says Jesse quietly.

Cassidy doesn’t take his eyes off his work, tying off the ends. “Hm?”

“D’you still hate me?”

Cassidy’s hands go still, and for a moment he just stares at the bandage before he finally looks up. Jesse’s watching him with a guarded expression. It would be so easy just to brush this off. It would be easy, and it would make things easier later, too. But after that, he finds he can’t do it. Not after that.

“I never hated you,” he says, tipping his head back down. “I’m too stupid to know how.” He waits, but Jesse doesn’t say anything. “You made me really fuckin’ angry, and that felt like hate for a while. If Tulip had died it might’ve been. But she didn’t, and…” He sighs. “I can’t hate you, mate, not really.” He stares at the bandage for a long time, and when it finally seems like Jesse isn’t going to answer, he looks back up. “Can we go n—?”

Jesse kisses him.

His hand on his jaw, holding him firmly but not forcing, his lips parted just enough, a faint flavor of cigarettes and beer, the scratch of his beard, a breath drawn without pulling away, soft and tender and _what the fuck is happening_

Jesse stops abruptly, pulling back, his eyes deer-in-headlights-wide. Cassidy gapes at him for a moment before blurting out shrilly, “What the hell are you doin’?!”

“I—” Jesse just sits there stupidly, like he doesn’t quite know the answer himself, and then they both hear it—a shuffling in the dark behind them, footsteps echoing in a tunnel. Their attention snaps to the portal, and once again Cassidy can see the ripples of movement from the dark. It’s coming too fast for him to think of what to do, too fast for Jesse to get to his feet, and they’re both still frozen on the floor as it staggers into the light.

“Tulip—!” Jesse perks up immediately, while Cassidy is torn between overwhelming relief at the sight of her and immediate panic over what just happened.

She breaks into a grin at the sight of them, coming up to meet them. “Thank _fuck_ , I been runnin’ in a straight goddamn line for—I dunno, feels like _hours_. I thought you guys were ahead-a me, and then you weren’t, and I thought—” She trails off, taking in the two of them with slowly developing curiosity.

“You didn’t run into it?” says Jesse, seeming determined to carry on as though he _isn’t_ kneeling on the floor and practically entangled with Cassidy.

“No…” Tulip doesn’t seem to have really heard the question, still staring at them, which has Cassidy nervously averting his eyes. They need to get _moving_ , but Jesse just kissed him and now Tulip is looking at him like she knows, and he’s full of turpentine and pain and he can’t think straight.

“Wait, what’s goin’ on here?” says Tulip. “Did I interrupt something? You guys are actin’ weird.”

Cassidy opens his mouth to answer and finds he has nothing prepared. What was Jesse’s plan, anyway? Is he going to lie about this, to her, after everything? What is even the _this_ there is to lie about? Did he really put Cassidy at the center of their inscrutable drama just as he was close to getting _out?_ Maybe he should just run and leave them behind to deal with it. Run and forget it ever happened, pretend he dreamed it, pretend—

“We, uh,” says Jesse, brilliant strategist.

“You made out, didn’t you,” says Tulip flatly.

Cassidy almost chokes on his own spit.

“ _No_ ,” says Jesse, sounding very much like a teenager who’s been caught out. “It—it was just a kiss.”

“Oh my god, you didn’t even get to first base?” Tulip is entirely too cavalier about this, Cassidy thinks, standing over them with her arms folded and a little hint of a smirk. “Well, shit, Jesse, I didn’t think you had it in you.”

“Listen, Tulip—” Jesse gets to his feet, setting his hands at her shoulders. “It’s—it’s been a complicated few days, I—”

“Look at you, blushing. I haven’t seen you do that in years.” Tulip just beams at him, resting a hand on his chest. “Settle down, all right? I’m just relieved you got there without me needing to—” She trails off as her eyes flick over him and she finally notices the makeshift bandage around his arm.

Cassidy stares at Tulip with deep, bewildered suspicion, certain there’s a trap here but not sure where it triggers. He has the acute sensation that he’s missed out on a whole conversation, perhaps several conversations, and yet when he shifts his gaze he finds Jesse looking just as confused.

“Wait, you—” Jesse starts.

Tulip has already moved well on. “What happened to your arm?” she says, looking intently up at him.

Some of the tension goes out of Jesse, and he says, “Cass needed blood,” like it’s the most straightforward thing in the world.

“He—” Tulip looks at Cassidy and finally takes in his whole situation with a growing look of distress. “What happened to _you?”_ she demands, immediately crouching down to inspect him.

“I, uh,” says Cassidy awkwardly as she leans in close, examining the remainder of his injuries. “I fought the thing. Didn’t agree with me.”

“He saved my life,” says Jesse.

“Shit,” she murmurs. “Do you need more?”

“ _No_ ,” says Cassidy firmly. “Can we—can we please just focus on getting the fuck out of here?”

“Yeah, that’s…” Jesse looks askance at the mouth of the passageway. “That’s probably a good idea.”

“All right, then get up, you damn noodle.” Tulip helps Cassidy to his feet, and he manages to wince only when she can’t see it. He’s still in sub-optimal shape, but they don’t need to know that.

“Thanks for savin’ him,” she says, holding onto him before he can pull toward the exit.

“Y-yeah.” Cassidy looks away uncomfortably. “Glad I could oblige.”

There’s more she wants to say, he can see it as he passes by her, but there’s no time for it now and he’s not sure he has room in his heart. There’s too much confusing input swirling around his turpentine-thickened brain, when all he _should_ be focusing on is getting the fuck out of this nightmare house.

They start back down the tunnel, Jesse leading them with his lighter as their only light source, not that it provides much insight to their surroundings, which are dark enough that it almost swallows the light, and otherwise seemingly featureless. Cassidy has the uncomfortable sense that this isn’t quite a complete space, like it’s something that shouldn’t exist, and maybe doesn’t, not entirely. For a while they’re quiet, staying close as they move deeper into the abyss.

Then, apropos of nothing, Cassidy decides he can’t take it anymore.

“Why did you kiss me, Jess?” he says.

He hears a stumble in the dark and sees the little circle of light flicker as Jesse manages to trip over his own feet. Unable to see his face, Cassidy’s resolve strengthens, his latent anger sharpening back into a point. “I mean why the fuck would you do that? Do you have any idea how long I’ve—and you just—”

“Do we have to do this right now?” Jesse hisses.

A tremor runs beneath their feet, and faint rhythmic thud pulses around them, like a distant echoing heartbeat.

“You got so fuckin’ angry about me an’ Tulip you beat the ever-loving shit outta me,” Cassidy carries on, too pissed now to give into the distraction of how they’re all gonna die. “You wanted me gone, and then, just like that—”

“Uh, guys, can we—” Tulip ventures, but Jesse has stopped, spun around, the light just barely illuminating his face.

“I wanted you gone to _protect_ you, dumbass,” Jesse snaps. “You were gonna get yourself killed. How can I make it clearer that I _didn’t want that?”_

“Don’t avoid the bloody question!” Another tremor runs through, heavier this time, the pulsing sound growing louder and faster. Cassidy ignores it, groping forward blindly until he finds Jesse’s arm and pulls him forward. “Why did you—”

“Because I _wanted_ to, okay? Jesus, why the fuck else would I—”

“What, because you suddenly like blokes? What am I, your goddamn test subject?”

“ _No_ , I—”

“For _fuck’s sake_ , it’s ‘cause he loves you, Cass!” Tulip shoves them apart and Jesse stumbles back a bit; she keeps her hand on Cassidy’s chest. “Can we _please_ do this when we’re not in a goddamn death trap?”

“He _what?”_ Cassidy sputters.

“Tulip, how…” murmurs Jesse.

“Jesse, how long have I known you? You’re _obvious_.” Tulip keeps her focus on Cassidy, though he can barely see her, just a small dark shape in front of him, her hand cool on his chest. “Listen, Cass, I lied to you before. All right? In the car, at the bus stop.”

He looks at her, at the outline of her, uncomprehending. The noise is getting louder, faster, closer, and all he can do is stare. “What?”

“When I said I didn’t love you.” She speaks without fear, without hesitation, resolute and firm. “I’m sorry. I needed to get you outta there, so they wouldn’t kill you. If I’d told you the truth you wouldn’t’ve left.”

“Tulip,” Jesse says, and he doesn’t sound angry, he doesn’t sound jealous, he sounds _relieved_.

“Wait, _what?”_ Cassidy pulls back from her sharply. “What the hell is going on here?”

“You’re being punked,” says Tulip with such impatience that he can all but _hear_ her eyes rolling. “Look, can we _please_ get out of here so we don’t all have to die in a tragic unrequited bullshit love triangle, because that would _really_ ruin my mood.”

The sound is all around them now, nearly deafening, and Cassidy’s flight response is still hopelessly choked out by frantic revisions his mind is now cataloging. “You…”

“Cassidy, goddammit!” Jesse surges forward and grabs him, yanking him down the tunnel as they break into a run, and the ground shudders beneath them, the walls seem to reverberate, the air grows hot and thick. It’s closing in now, it’s going to get them and they’re going to die, and it’ll be his fault.

A fractured growl shatters out from somewhere above them, and _there’s_ that flight response as Cassidy picks up speed, now leading the charge with a hand on each Tulip and Jesse’s arms, refusing to let go this time, not until they come out the other side, wherever the hell that—

The ground cracks beneath them and they all stumble and fall straight down, and they keep falling, Jesse with a string of fumbled curses and Tulip with one sharp _Fuck!_ , and Cassidy has just enough time to think this might be it, just this, the three of them falling for all eternity.

Then they hit the floor. The impact is not nearly what it should be, considering how far they just seemed to fall, but Cassidy will take that blessing. He picks himself up, gingerly clutching at his stomach, and looks around to see the living room, just as it was before, with the fire now burning once again. No hole in the ceiling, nothing in the walls. Tulip and Jesse grunting in pain as they push themselves up and make the same discovery.

“Christ,” he mutters. “Well, now fucking what?”

Nobody has any time to speak before that growl sounds again, much, _much_ closer, and they all spin around to see the creature emerging from the shadows once again, from the direction of the foyer this time, blocking their exit, or at least their former exit.

The creature sinks toward them, on all fours again, its legs bent at the wrong angels, its lips curled back in a snarl.

Cassidy doesn’t have time to think, and apparently neither does Jesse, before Tulip opens fire.

“Jesus—!” Cassidy dives down to clear her line of sight as a bullet zings past him, and he watches with horror as the creature ripples and shifts before them, faster than his eyes can track. It changes shape like it can’t decide what it wants to be, from ox to rabbit to deer to a normal-shaped wolf, one for every round Tulip fires, and with each transformation the room bends around them, drawing in, warping with achingly loud creaks and groans of wood. Every shot misses. Cassidy hasn’t been counting but he thinks she’s near empty.

“Tulip, stop!” he shouts, and launches himself to his feet, propelling himself forward. “You can’t hit it while it’s— _fuck!”_

It’s a bear now, a fucking _bear_ , and it lunges to meet him and knocks him flat on his back, coming down over him with a terrifyingly heavy thud, a ghostly paw on his chest, crushing him, carrying every bit of weight as a full, corporeal grizzly. He can’t breathe. He reaches up weakly to try and punch it, but his fist passes right through.

“Cass!” he hears Tulip call, desperation in her voice, she loves him, she _loves_ him, that’s what she said, right? And Jesse, too? They both—it doesn’t make _sense_ but they—

 _ **Show yourself!**_ rings out around them, and abruptly the weight on top of him fades, and the creature, its apparently true form, eldritch stick figure and wolf head, are now staring down at him.

“Shoot it!” Jesse shout. “Shoot it now!”

The gun fires. The creature lets out a piercing shriek and leaps from Cassidy with such force that he tumbles a bit; he can barely track it as it catches itself on the wall, the wall that is now convex, warping inward like it’s about to burst. The whole room is like this; Cassidy can barely regain his footing as he struggles to get up, and he catches sight of Tulip with her back against the opposite wall, fighting to brace herself against a surface that won’t stop moving.

Jesse is in the center of the room, amidst the chair remains, managing to stand but now fully in the creature’s path. It sees him. It coils, about to hurl forward.

“Jesse!” Cassidy tries to bolt toward him but can’t keep from tripping as the floor shakes and rolls beneath him.

“It’s too fuckin’ fast, I—I can’t hit it!” Tulip cries, still aiming the gun at it, her hands shaking.

The creature leaps toward Jesse, who shouts an overpowering _**STOP!**_

And everything does. The creature jars to a halt inches away from him. The room settles and stills, everything returning to an ordinary shape, an unmoving calm. Cassidy stares around them, struggling to process the whole bloody _house_ obeying a spoken word.

“Holy shit,” says Tulip. “You can…”

“I don’t think I can hold him long,” says Jesse through gritted teeth, still facing off with the creature as it growls and snaps its jaws at him. “It’s—resistant somehow.”

“I only got one shot left,” says Tulip shakily. “I, I left the others in the car—”

“It’s okay,” says Jesse steadily. “Just make it count.”

Cassidy keeps his eyes on the creature, not liking the way its hands curl against the floor; it’s not frozen like it should be, it’s pushing back, leashed, and any moment now it’ll break free. He doesn’t like their odds. One shot, and if it misses, what then?

“Wait,” he hisses, holding out a hand toward Tulip. “Not yet.”

She wavers. “Cass—”

The hold snaps and the creature charges, but Cassidy was poised, waiting for it, and once again he lunges to intercept. He’s not sure what his object is, maybe if he and Jesse can work together, give Tulip a truly clean shot—but they can’t rely on Genesis for this, not when it’s able to break free like that.

He connects with the thing, knocking it down, at least in its natural form it’s top heavy and lightweight; and this time he’s ready, landing a punch across its snout and wrangling its grasping limbs as best he can, trying to pin it down. It’s not going to last. Unless they work something out to truly catch this thing off guard, this is going to go just like it did before.

Jesse is moving around behind the creature, like he might be trying to flank, and then Cassidy catches sight of him crouching down, touching the floor.

He says, _**Open up.**_

The floor obliges, shuddering violently as it cracks down the middle, a broad fissure forming through both the wood and the earth beneath. The creature doesn’t seem to care, taking another slash at Cassidy, who jumps back and narrowly avoids it. He squares off like this is a bloody boxing match, and the creature draws itself up to its full height, leering down at him, its feet at the edge of the opening Jesse’s made.

Cassidy looks at Jesse, then chances a glance back at Tulip, who’s come up close, the gun ready in her hand, her eyes trained on not the beast, but the fissure.

This creature likes to breathe in the moment before it springs, Cassidy’s noticed, like a cat pouncing. So far his mistake has been falling into that trap of anticipation, waiting until it’s just about to make its move instead of just bull rushing it well before, slamming into it with the full force of his body, which is exactly what he does now. Coiled and prepared, it’s not vulnerable, but he doesn’t need it vulnerable. He just needs it to fall.

Its long feet slip against the crack in the floor, and it pitches backwards, down into the deep dark pit Jesse’s made. Tulip is beside Cassidy in an instant, arm straight, hand steady, and she leans over the edge and fires.

They all hear the muffled _thump_ as the body hits the earth.

Then there’s quiet.

“Shite,” Cassidy breathes, looking across the gap at Jesse. “Good… good thinking, padre.”

Jesse smiles—actually smiles at him. It’s faint and tired, but it fills Cassidy’s chest with uncomfortable warmth, and he quickly looks away.

Tulip takes a moment to compose herself, then peers nervously over the edge. “Oh my god,” she says, “oh, shit. That’s a person.”

“What?!” Jesse leans over and looks down, and Cassidy follows suit. Indeed there is, curled up at the bottom of the hole, a naked, normal-shaped human body. He has a bullet wound in his chest and his body is crumpled from the fall, but he’s still breathing, staring up at them.

“Oh, fuck,” Cassidy breathes. “Are—are you okay down there?”

“ _Really_ , Cass?” Tulip mutters before calling, “Are you—Did we, like… break a curse here or something?”

The man groans and answers in a raspy voice, distant and barely audible, “I… I have been trapped like this for many, many years.” He draws a difficult breath. “You have… finally freed me.”

The three of them look at each other uncertainly, then back down. “Uh… okay,” says Tulip. “You’re welcome, I guess? Look, do you need any help?”

“Too late for me,” whispers the man. “And I am… so very tired. Please, listen—this curse is like a disease—it will spread. Those who kill us are doomed to…” he breaks off in a horrible hacking cough, then steadies himself with another harsh breath, “…to become us.”

“Ooohhhh shit,” whispers Tulip, and Jesse shoots them both a look of abject horror. Cassidy just pinches the bridge of his nose. Of course. Of _course_.

“If you… breathe a word of this… to anyone… within the next year,” the man gasps, “you will become… this.”

Tulip hesitates, staring suspiciously at the unfortunate man. “W… wait, that’s it?” she says. “We just gotta… not talk about it? For just a _year_ , not even, like, the rest of our lives, or…?”

“Hang on then, which one of us actually did the thing that’s killing you?” says Cassidy shrewdly. “Is it the bullet or the fall, because the fall was like a team effort.”

The man seems startled by their perfectly reasonable questions, and hesitates before answering, “I… It is hard to say. It’s probably best if none of you say anything.”

“But just for a year,” Tulip clarifies.

“…Yes,” says the man with a distinct note of reproach.

They all exchange a look, and then Jesse says what they’re likely all thinking: “Can we… talk about it to each other, since we were all here, or…?”

The man huffs impatiently. “Probably? Look, nobody gave me an instruction manual, okay,” he rasps. “I’m just repeating what I was told.”

“Right,” says Cassidy. “So you Orpheus’d yourself into this shite in the first place.”

“Look, I’m not _proud_ ,” says the man defensively, rather losing his grip on the whole ominous prophecy tone. He seems to notice that, because a moment later he’s recovering it as best he can: “Just—you mustn’t speak of this to anyone, or this curse will befall…” he hesitates, “…one to three of you.”

“Well, I wouldn’t worry about it,” says Tulip. “Talking about things is not really our strong suit.”

The man stares at her for a moment before leaning his head back. “Well, then you’re probably fine,” he mutters. And before any of them can say anything else, they watch his body wither away, disintegrating into dust.

They all stare at the space left behind for a moment, then at each other.

“Well,” says Cassidy. “That was weird.”

“Yup,” says Tulip, and she about-faces and heads toward the entryway. “Door’s back,” she announces. “I’m gonna go check the car, you guys do somethin’ about the fire, and then we’re gettin’ the fuck outta here.”

Jesse steps carefully around the mess he’s made, considers it for a moment, then commands it to close back up. It does, sealing with a snap, returning the floor to its ordinary state.

“Jesus,” he mutters. “So was the house even part of it, or…”

Cassidy just shrugs, in no real hurry to think about this house now or maybe ever again. He watches as Jesse takes a moment to deal with the fire, not really paying attention. He feels dazed and detached. When he comes back out of the fog he sees the fire’s been either doused or smothered, and Jesse’s standing there looking at him awkwardly. There’s light coming in, he realizes, and he looks at the window that had previously been swarmed over by plant life, now showing sunlight through the gaps.

“Wh—is it morning already?” he says, as if he wasn’t disoriented enough.

“Yup,” says Tulip as she comes back in. “Car’s workin’ again, just fuckin’ because, I guess. I’m not complaining.” She shrugs and holds up Cassidy’s old umbrella. “Got this for ya.”

Cassidy takes it tentatively, and they follow her out to the front door, which shows no sign that it was ever missing. Cassidy opens the umbrella and stands under it as they all pass the threshold, down the broken porch and to the little path. He stops, and they stop too. He’s aware of them both looking at him, but he keeps his gaze ahead, peering through the trees.

“So,” he says eventually, and turns to face them. “Where are we off to next, then? Please no more big terrible houses.”

Tulip breaks into a smile, and Jesse smiles too, smaller and a little surprised, but Cassidy doesn’t have time to take that in before Tulip grabs his collar and drags him down and kisses him. He goes very still for a moment, then awkwardly shifts the umbrella to his shoulder so he can settle his hands carefully at her hips. He feels like Jesse is going to pull them apart and punch him at any moment, but it doesn’t happen. It’s just Tulip, like he remembers, the softness and warmth and the way she really steers the whole bloody ship, one hand tight around the back of his neck and the other still tugging on his shirt as she parts her lips. Cassidy can’t help it; he starts grinning against her, and finds he can’t stop.

When she finally pulls back, she gives him an appraising smile and looks over at Jesse. “I figure we should get to a hotel,” she says, “since we didn’t actually get any goddamn sleep.” She releases her hold on Cassidy’s shirt and gives him a gentle pat on the chest. “Not that I expect we’ll get any there, either.”

“Oh, uh,” Jesse stammers, looking at Cassidy. He swallows, his face flushed. “No, probably not.”

Cassidy studies him for a moment, going back through all the shit Jesse said in that house, all of it feeling like too much, too little, too late. He meant it all.

“I’m gonna need an itemized bloody breakdown of how the fuck _this_ came about,” says Cassidy, swirling a finger around to indicate the three of them. “You both broke my heart like at least seven times, all right? This is a lot to handle.”

“Yeah.” Tulip grips his hand tightly for a moment. “I know. I’m sorry, Cass.”

He thinks about her storming into a Grail-induced war zone, shooting him out of it, dragging him into her car. All because she could. All because she wanted to. Wanted _him_.

Jesse has come closer, Cassidy realizes, tipping his head to step under the umbrella, bringing them inches apart.

“We’ll just have to find some way to make it up to you,” he says softly.

Cassidy feels a blush spreading up the back of his neck to his ears. “O-okay,” he fumbles out. “I’m sure that, that can be arranged.”

Jesse smiles and steps back, heading up the path to the road. “But we’re not doin’ it in a damn coffin,” he says over his shoulder.

“Seriously, I _gotta_ know what that’s about,” says Tulip. “We’re allowed to talk about _that_ , right?”

“It’s not really…” Cassidy starts, and then sighs. “Well, all right, I guess.”

This is good, he thinks. It feels good. It’s been so long since he knew how that felt that he almost doesn’t want to trust it. But he forces that away. Tulip kissed him, not because she thought he was dying, not because they were putting on a scam, but because she wanted to. _Jesse_ kissed him, which is a whole series of revelations stacked on top of each other, which Cassidy is going to need some time to sift through, but the way Jesse _looked_ at him just now, it was… This is good. _He_ feels good. They wanted him back. They want him around. They love him.

They make their way back to the car, and Cassidy folds his umbrella across his lap and asks if maybe they can rob a blood clinic before they get to a hotel. Tulip flicks on the radio, and they drive. Cassidy realizes that he’s grinning like a goddamn idiot, and he can’t stop and doesn’t want to, and whenever one of them catches sight of him in the rear view mirror, they smile back.

 


End file.
